Evaluation of the Prelimary Exercise
Our group of three produced a two minute film of someone entering a room, walking across it and then sitting down to have a conversation with somebody else. We had to use both match-on-action and shot-reverse shot.
We initially filmed our scenes mainly outside, we were happy with all our shots and positioning but when it came round to editing we found that the sound quality was poor and the sound of the wind was the predominant sound of the whole film. Taking all this in mind we made a joint decision to re-film the footage inside so that we could actually hear the conversation.
We filmed this and found that all in all our shots were all steady and in focus, and mainly framed using the rule of thirds – except our camera was perhaps a little lower down. The eye-line match was generally correct which is essential when using shot-reverse shot. Our subjects were well lit, as the room we filmed in were bright. However, there was a slightly dark overshadow on the face of one of our characters; this in fact makes the face chiaroscuro which fits in with the characters personality, however it was unintentionally done and the reason we got this result was because that particular shot was back lit.
Our match-on-action worked very well, and it flowed correctly to give the impression it was all done in one take. Our editing was tight and that meant we didn’t have any jump cuts with our shots. Our shot-reverse shot was very successful but there wasn’t a lot of it in our footage, we probably could of added more. The pace is good, it is quick moving without being too rushed and our transactions were invisible. I am satisfied with the editing decisions because like I said we made ours quite tight, therefore I wouldn’t change any.
The sound on our second attempt of the scene was much better quality; there was no background noise to drown out the sound of our dialogue. When watching it you can hear what is being said and understand the conversation.
Our lighting is of good quality except perhaps for the blind that back lights the scene when focused on one character. The background and setting isn’t as appropriate as it could be due to the nature of the conversation in the scene, however our original choice of benches outside was perfect but due to the sound quality we had to settle for something inside the building.
